I am watching a very brave TV reporter risk his life to get a story.
No, I am not talking about the scores of TV reporters who stood in lashing rain and wind - - and in one case sewage - - along the East Coast of the United States to bring us the devastation of Hurricane Irene up close and personal.
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As it turns out, while their courage and intentions were well-placed, their geography was not. The state worst hit was Vermont, which happens not to be on the Atlantic Ocean and has no coast at all.
The rest of the nation might wonder why East Coast stories, especially New York City stories, get so much TV coverage and the answer is twofold. First, almost all of TV news is headquartered in the New York area, and that’s where the TV execs live. If your basement floods, it’s a problem; if their basements flood, it’s a major news event.
Second, look at the numbers. Here is the breakdown of U.S. population by percentage in each time zone, as provided by my crack research assistant (Google.)
Eastern: 47.0 percent
Central: 32.9 percent
Mountain: 5.4 percent
Pacific: 14.1 percent
Alaska and Hawaii: 0.6 percent
So you can see why the East Coast gets most of the coverage and when you add in the Midwest (stand-ups of reporters being blown around by blizzards and making snow angels) you get 80 percent of the U.S. population.
True, the West Coast gets earthquake aftermath coverage, but since there is no reliable method of predicting earthquakes, the networks cannot station reporters up and down the coast to scare the hell out of people days in advance.
So who was the brave TV reporter whom I saw? It was Nic Robertson, CNN’s chief international correspondent, who appeared to be breaking into a home in Tripoli.
After banging on the door for 15 minutes and getting no answer, he boosted himself up on a window sill, grabbed the top of a wall and stuck his head over. (His camera crew - - and they never get enough credit - - must have done the same because we suddenly saw the inside of a compound with people running around.) The compound, which Robertson described as a “fancy villa in a posh” neighborhood, came complete with a trampoline, a swimming pool, a garden, and a lush, well-watered lawn, even though Tripoli is running out of water.
“I’ve not had a shower or washed in running water for three days,” Robertson reported.
Robertson and his crew finally were allowed into the compound and got some exclusive footage of a worm said to be Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, better known as the Lockerbie Bomber.
As I have written before, Megrahi blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, murdering 270 people, including 190 Americans.
It wasn’t until Jan. 31, 2001, that a three-judge Scottish panel finally convicted him and sentenced Megrahi to life in prison.